Dungeons and Dragons really DOES make you kill people:
A South Jersey man is being jailed without bail in Montgomery County, Pa. on charges that he stabbed three people to death last Friday in King of Prussia.
…
[T]he motive appears to be jealousy, but [investigators] are also looking into some sort of connection with the fantasy role-playing [...]

…Tuscaloosa, Alabama and ridiculous lawsuits related to “video game violence.”
A lawsuit claims the video game “Grand Theft Auto” led a teenager to shoot two police officers and a dispatcher to death in 2003, mirroring violent acts depicted in the popular game.
The suit announced Tuesday seeks damages from the game’s manufacturers and two stores that allegedly [...]

[Via Ubiq] - The Complete Guide to Unlawful Carnal Knowledge for Fantasy Role-playing Games:
Most everybody has had a character come in contact with a person of the opposite sex, but the encounter was nothing more than the brief statement: “I’ll have sex with the fair lass and leave.” This leaves out a lot of exciting [...]

Stalwart voice of reason in the wilds of our kingdom of fear:
GTA: San Andreas is not a game that is appropriate for children. It is full of profanity, random acts of violence, terror, drug usage, and Samuel L. Jackson. None of these are appropriate for children. I would also note that the movie “Pulp Fiction” [...]

Via Reuters:
A new video game to be released on Monday allows players to simulate the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy.
The release of “JFK Reloaded” is timed to coincide with the 41st anniversary of Kennedy’s murder in Dallas and was designed to demonstrate a lone gunman was able to kill the president.
That’s right. [...]

I forgot to mention it, but Cory Doctorow - the author of the “Anda’s Game” short story I linked earlier - is an editor at the so-very-very-excellent BoingBoing and EVERYTHING he writes (including his Locus Award-winning first novel) is published under a Creative Commons license. Cory has long been a pile of awesome for [...]

(via Lum)
Salon.com is running an interesting (fictional) story about the (very real) issue of online “sweatshops” in MMO gaming. What’s EXTRA-interesting is that the story (similar to all of the content on this site) is published under a Creative Commons License - a first for Salon. As a result, I’ve placed a [...]

A very interesting piece on harnessing and/or controlling the “real world” economic value inherent in MMOGs.
Among MMOG customers and developers, online debate rages about the unfairness of the time-investment vs. money-investment trade-off. Those who have an excess of one resource and a shortage of the other face off against those with the opposite resource imbalance. [...]

Sony has announced plans to support MP3 in addition to their proprietary Atrac audio format. Assuming this means the PSP will launch with MP3 playback capabilities, I think my choice regarding next-gen portables is pretty much finalized.

From Fischer’s website:
Flash! July 15, 2004 Tokyo, Japan
The World Chess Champion Bobby Fischer has been viciously attacked brutalized seriously injured and very nearly killed when he was illegally detained and arrested by the Japanese immigration authorities at Narita international airport in Tokyo Japan. Also the Japanese immigration authorities at Narita international airport have illegally detained [...]

Folks are no longer searching for Bobby Fischer, as the chess guru has been detained in Japan for extradition to the United States, pursuant to violations of UN sanctions in the early 90s related to his playing chess in Yugoslavia against his old Cold War rival, Boris Spassky.
Since “officially” retiring from chess in 1996 (to [...]

Some years after officially bowing out of the Console Wars, Sega has decided to release a USB version of the controller for their old Saturn console. Insofar as there are no PC titles available that would call for the specialized controller, it’s a fairly clear nod by a (once) major developer to the idea [...]